Question: Suppose I'm trying to send a text message to a friend. In general, I need log2(26) bits for every letter I want to send, as

Suppose I'm trying to send a text message to a friend. In general, I need log2(26) bits for every letter I want to send, as there are 26 letters in the English alphabet, but if I have some information on the distribution of the letters, I can do better. For example, I might give the most common letter 'e' a shorter bit representation. It turns out the number of bits needed on average is precisely the entropy of the distribution: let us see why that is

Step by Step Solution

There are 3 Steps involved in it

1 Expert Approved Answer
Step: 1 Unlock blur-text-image
Question Has Been Solved by an Expert!

Get step-by-step solutions from verified subject matter experts

Step: 2 Unlock
Step: 3 Unlock

Students Have Also Explored These Related Accounting Questions!